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Literary friends and foes prove that the pen is truly mightier than the sword. The world's most respected writers reveal their acerbic side of beloved authors who can become brutal critics when writing about their fellow wordsmiths. Curated from letters, essays and reviews, this sometimes stinging, sometimes good natured and always delightful collection will ignite the armchair critic in us all. Edna St Vincent Millay on e.e. cummings: 'Some of the most pompous nonsense I ever let slip to the floor with a wide yawn.' Virginia Woolf on James Joyce: 'A queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.' Evelyn Waugh: 'I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.' And Charlotte Brontë on Jane Austen's Emma: 'She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs by nothing profound.' Page after page of amusement ending with the quite brilliant Lord Byron on William Wordsworth: 'Turdsworth'. One quote per page, nicely typeset. 144pp.